To them, an unobstructed view of the Sacramento skyline (which, most likely, would be both lower and narrower had the no-growthers been in charge 50 years ago) is a public use. In their strange world, maintaining the status quo is progress and therefore of benefit to the public.
Even more unsettling is their attitude toward residential property.
The typical "green" politician pins his or her re-election hopes on home values going up 10-15% annually. This is a no-brainer if you have a rapidly-growing area and no cheap land to build on. Buy up farms for "open space" and impose an urban growth boundary and watch property values soar -- except in those areas excluded from further development.
While existing homeowners feel their new-found wealth and borrow against their equity for a Carribean cruise or two, young couples just getting started are often shut out of the housing market.
So you'll see many of these same anti-growth politicians climbing on the "affordable housing" bandwagon -- and imposing even more regulations on property owners and developers.
We do not have to "try" to understand their mentality. We understand it quite well, in all its absurd permutations.
What many of these Marxists are missing (or refusing to admit to the public if they understand how wrong they are) is that the framers put in many of our rights AGAINST THE POWER OF GOVERNMENT, no matter how "Democratic", no matter how "representative" was the process that brought the proposed government action into being and no matter how benevolent those representatives think is their purpose.
Many government proposals concerning land use have constitutional means without emanent domain. Simply purchase parcels of the land on the open market, offering the highest price to the owner when the owner is willing to sell them. Admit to the taxpayers that such purchases may require taking some debt (bonds) temporarily, until all the desired lots are able to be purchased and successfully acquired; with the bonds paid off when the goverment resells the land. But, the real reason these legal, and most likely not financially bad means, are not used is that the motives are often as political as economic and its not that someone else might not do the same thing privately, but that the end result will bypass their political control. It is seldom about "public interest" and nearly always about political interest.